Chapter XX (4)

Of Mr. Morgan’s many activities, he enjoyed none more keenly, and found none more beneficial, than yachting. As many days and hours as he could spare, he passed aboard his steam yacht, the _Corsair_, often spending the summer nights in New York Bay or on Long Island Sound, early in the week, and running up the Hudson, to his country home, for the week-end. Longer trips were made to Newport or Bar Harbor--with the New York Yacht Club, when its annual cruise was on; at other times with only his personal guests. From 1897 till 1899, he was the club’s commodore; and his hand went deep into his pocket to build the _Columbia_, which defended the _America’s_ cup in the last of these years, and was used as a trial boat in 1901, when _Reliance_ was the defender. The _Corsair_ of 1891 (a 242-foot boat) was sold to the Government, as other yachts were, when we were at war with Spain, in 1898. As the _Gloucester_, under Captain Wainwright, she gave a very good account of herself at Santiago. That year the _Sagamore_ served as flagship; but on the very day the Commodore sold the _Corsair_ he had commissioned her designer, Mr. J. Beavor Webb, to build a boat sixty-two feet longer than the old one; and the next year the new _Corsair_ was launched.

Mr. Morgan’s private signal was known in Europe as well as in home waters, though he never crossed the ocean on anything but a great liner, usually the flagship of the White Star Line. This line--the chief subsidiary of the International Mercantile Marine Company, one of his many organizations--was in a sense his pet; and the sinking of the _Titanic_, in whose construction he had taken the keenest interest, was probably a heavier blow to him than to any one to whom it did not bring personal bereavement.

Mr. Morgan’s great liking for collies is known to all lovers of dogs, and the Cragston kennels are decorated with many a first prize won at the Madison Square Garden and elsewhere. As a rule, the animals, young and old, are confined to their own quarters, well away from the house, and separated from the house grounds by the public road that runs along the bluff on the west shore of the Hudson at this point. Despite the comfort, not to say luxuriousness, of their surroundings indoors, they are always overjoyed to be let out; and one of their owner’s keenest pleasures was to see them released; to watch them dash, in a pack, to the gateway, turn sidewise in the air as they sprang through, then tear like mad down the road in the direction of Highland Falls and West Point, yelping as if possessed. After running a few hundred yards, they would turn as suddenly as they had started, and race back, passing the gate at full speed, and dashing another hundred rods or so, before turning again.

“Sefton Hero,” or some other great prize-winner, was likely to be seen about the house in the daytime; but to only one collie was granted the privilege of permanent occupancy. This was a dog that had been in the habit of running down the private road to meet his master on the arrival of the yacht, the private signal of which he had learned to recognize. One afternoon, in his zealous haste, he failed to see a railway train that arrived just as he reached the riverside. The cow-catcher struck him and tossed him many feet, but happily he landed on a bit of swampy ground with no bones broken. His devotion, with its almost fatal consequences, won him special privileges for the rest of his days.

Not long after the completion of Mr. Morgan’s greatest work as an organizer, he was the chief guest at a dinner of the Gridiron Club, in Washington--one of those functions where the newspaper “boys” have fun with the great ones of the earth. It was, of course, impossible to get him to talk; but leaving the room, late at night, his arm linked in that of his old friend Mr. George F. Baker, he exclaimed, “If only I were a speaker, how I should have liked to talk for an hour to-night, and tell them the story of the organization of the Steel Corporation!” He may have felt an equally strong impulse to unbosom himself on other occasions, but if so he repressed it.

An invincible shyness, which seemed hardly consistent with the man’s dominating forcefulness, made him as sedulous in avoiding publicity as many are in courting it. On certain occasions it was impossible for him to escape the spot-light; but when its rays fell full upon him his discomfort was obvious. Such an occasion was the dedication of the New Theatre, now the Century. As chairman, it was Mr. Morgan’s duty to receive the silver key of the building from the architect. For once he had to take the center of the stage in only too literal a sense. As he sat there throughout the addresses of Senator Root and Governor Hughes, alternately glancing at, and crumpling up, the scrap of paper on which his notes were written, it was an easy guess that the remotest corner of the attic would have been a preferable place of waiting; and when his turn came, and he had pronounced his two or three formal sentences, his relief was evident. Once, when he was called on for a speech, he said, “No, no, gentlemen; I have never made a speech in my life, and I’m not going to begin now.”

Now and then a business proposition of minor importance would be submitted for Mr. Morgan’s approval, which was usually given or withheld after apparently cursory consideration. If the matter came up again months afterward, and there was any difference of opinion as to its details, the recollection of the senior partner, who had given the thing five minutes’ attention, was invariably found to be more nearly correct than that of the juniors, who had had the handling of the business. Once in a way, Mr. Morgan might have occasion to borrow a small coin. If so, the next time he met the lender, no matter how many weeks had elapsed, he would recall the occurrence and repay the loan, as surely as if the amount were a quarter of a million instead of a quarter of a dollar. A table or a chair not in its accustomed place attracted his attention; a picture hanging slightly askew disturbed him. For ten or fifteen years before his death, it was his habit to play solitaire for a while before going to bed, and he arranged the cards with the utmost neatness and precision. For his mind was nothing if not orderly, and disorder in exterior objects disturbed it. When great affairs occupied it, there was no room for petty details; but in the absence of matters of moment, its craving for activity had to satisfy itself with whatever came to hand.

Mr. Morgan’s delicate sense of the fitness of things is illustrated by an incident related by the young lady who rebound some of the choicest books in his library. One of these is Geoffrey Tory’s “Book of Hours” (1525). Into the cover design Miss Lahey wove Tory’s name, as he himself was in the habit of doing; but Mr. Morgan would not allow her to reproduce the emblem of a broken jug which the old French artist had adopted as his sign-manual, using it on every page of his illuminations. Mr. Morgan’s feeling was that this device was too personal to the artist himself to be used on any work but that of his own hands.

The public was surprised at the fervent declaration of religious belief with which Mr. Morgan’s remarkable document began. It almost appeared that he regarded his faith as a thing so real, not to say tangible, as to be transmissible by legal process. Certainly it was fundamental in his own nature, and as potent a force as any that shaped his actions. In a noteworthy tribute in the “Outlook,” a former partner and most intimate friend, Mr. Robert Bacon, late Ambassador to France, sums up the matter in these few words: “He was a man of faith; not only religious faith, but faith in the universe, in humanity, in his country, in his associates, and in the highest standards of honor in both his public and his private life.”

A giant frame, an iron will,
A mind that sped as lightning speeds,
Cleaving a way for wits less keen--
A man whose words were deeds.

Simple, sincere, accessible
To all that sought; but woe betide
Him who before those piercing eyes
Faltered, evaded, lied!

And yet those eyes, so quick to blaze
And sear, were no less quick to bless;
For strength and courage, in great hearts,
Mate still with tenderness.

Honest, for honesty’s own sake--
Loyal, for so his soul was made--
With one swift glance he chose his ground,
And held it unafraid.

Keen to acquire, to spend, to give,
Ardent in all things, small in none,
He joyed and sorrowed, lived and loved
And toiled till his task was done.

J. B. G.

MAURICE MAETERLINCK

BY STEPHEN PHILLIPS

In the February number of “The Poetry Review,” M. Maeterlinck
speaks of the editor of that magazine as “le bon poète, Stephen
Phillips, dont je suis admirateur, fervent et fidèle.”--~Ed.~

Master Mystic over Europe
Whom we did not gladly hear,
Now a sweet revenge thou takest
In the stubborn Saxon tear.

Murmuring of the bees about thee,
With a flight how like thine own,
Upward due to utter heavens,
Happy, be the flight but flown.

Standing half-way between two worlds,
All a-dream, yet dreaming true,
Lord of shadows, yet of shadows
Passing to a perfect blue.

All the ghosts that throng thy pages
Are more real than living wights,
All our noontides are not brighter
Than the brightness of thy nights.

What the dumb moon saith in splendor,
Or the husky bird at dawn,
Thou with human note expressest
Of our murmured fate forlorn.

What the sea would say to sunrise,
Memories of a speechless wind,
This thy muffled muse suggested,
All we seek yet never find.

Yet, forsaking lovelier fancies,
In thy Monna Vanna tale
Thou couldst grip a sterner story,
Hold us fast and leave us pale.

Still the wings we are not ’ware of,
Voices that we dully hear,
Spirit-music struggling downward,
Thou dost bring us dimly near.

I, detained in this ill island,
Where her mist the singer bars,
Hail thee angel of a twilight
Trembling momently to stars.

SOCIALISM IN THE COLLEGES

THE RESPONSIBILITY OF EDUCATORS FOR THE GROWTH OF REVOLUTIONARY OPINION

Simon-pure Socialism is so ugly, so red in tooth and claw, that to be hated it needs but to be seen and understood. Yet there are so many dilutions of Socialism on the market, emotional adulterations and attenuations of the genuine brand, that the inexperienced seeker is pretty sure to have a mixture far below full strength palmed off on him, and after tasting he will be likely to say that the stuff is not so bad, after all. Socialism is offered in the guise of bland and salutary reforms; it takes the form of ethical standards, of social justice, of uplift, and of progress and happiness for all; now it is the shield that guards the poor and the helpless against the shafts of undeserved ill fortune, and now it stays the hand of the heartless oppressor. In its assumptions it is the Ten Commandments, it is the Sermon on the Mount, it is Christianity. Can we wonder that in these disguises it disarms suspicion and wins a tolerance that is already a half-way approval?

It is time that the men and women of this country awoke to an understanding of the true nature of Socialism, of what it is, what it aims to do, and how it seeks to achieve its ends. Socialism is revolution, it is blood, it is overthrow, spoliation, and a surrender of the priceless conquests of civilization, an extinction of the noble impulses that have raised mankind out of the condition of savagery.

It is time these things were known and understood, we say; it is time that foolish misconception gave way to clear knowledge, because Socialism is everywhere sowing its seeds, because it is spreading in the land, not insidiously, but by an open propaganda; because the principles of Socialism are taking hold upon the minds of youth through teaching permitted, or in the name of “academic freedom” actually encouraged, in our schools, colleges, universities, and even in theological seminaries. And it is only here and there that from some chair of instruction a voice is heard proclaiming the truth about Socialism, examining its foundations, subjecting its system and its principles to the test of reason and common sense, and picturing forth in the clear light of experience the consequences of substituting them for the existing social order. Having permitted this poison to be instilled into the minds of their students, it is the belief of men who have observed with growing apprehension the spread of Socialistic belief, that the country’s institutions of learning will be false to their duty if they fail to supply the antidote by establishing courses of instruction in which the fallacies, the falsehoods, and the dangers of Socialism shall be combatted by competent analysis in the light of history and economic truth.

No board of trustees, no faculty, can plead an excusable ignorance as to what Socialists intend. They differ as to plan and method, but they are agreed upon this foundation article of their faith:

The Socialist program requires the public or collective ownership
and operation of the principal instruments and agencies for the
production and distribution of wealth--the land, mines, railroads,
steamboats, telegraph and telephone lines, mills, factories, and
modern machinery.

“This is the main program,” says Morris Hillquit, and it “admits of no limitation, extension, or variation.” The Socialist program means, then, the abolition of private property in land and in investments, the abolition of rent, profits, of the wage system, and of competition. Some Socialists advocate confiscation by taxing at full value--for of course Socialism aims at full control of the powers of government; some, like the Industrial Workers of the World, would have the wage-earners take forcible possession of the factories and operate them for their own account; others would make a pretense of payment, while still others preach direct seizure. All agree that the land and the instruments of production and exchange must be taken out of the hands of private owners and transferred to the State, and assent to that foundation doctrine makes every Socialist a revolutionist. Obviously, it is a revolution that could succeed only through violence and bloodshed, but the real Socialists do not shrink from that extreme. “The safety and the hope of the country,” said Victor Berger, the Socialist member of the last Congress, “will finally lie in one direction only--that of violent and bloody revolution.” He advises Socialists to read and think, and also “have a good rifle.” But the literature of Socialism supplies proof upon proof that the capture of the Government and of property is to be effected by violence. Hence the Socialist’s hatred of the Army, of the Navy, and of the National Guard; hence his detestation of all manifestations of the sentiment of patriotism.

Indeed, one of the noblest expressions of that sentiment which our literature affords may serve as a complete demonstration of the conflict between the doctrines of Socialism and some of the convictions that have struck their roots deepest in our common life. The familiar lines of Fitz-Greene Halleck’s “Marco Bozzaris” admirably serve the purpose:

“Strike, for your altars and your fires;
Strike, for the green graves of your sires,
God, and your native land!”

Our “altars” are the symbol of our religion. “No God, no master,” is the cry of the Socialists, and it was only after a prolonged debate that a repudiation of religion was kept out of the Socialist platform of 1908. Our “fires” are our homes and hearthstones. Socialism would destroy the home. The revolting doctrine of promiscuity was applauded, and applauded by young women of the faith, at a recent meeting of Socialists. “The green graves of your sires”--those words should remind us that the earliest form of title to land was the right to inclose the graves of parents and kindred. Socialism permits no private ownership of land. “God, and your native land”--Socialism denies the Creator and puts the red flag above the Stars and Stripes. Could the grim meaning of this hideous creed be brought more directly home to the minds and hearts of American youth than by the evidence that it is a cold-blooded negation of the fine and lofty patriotism of Halleck’s adjuration?

Yet American youth by thousands are to-day under Socialistic teaching and conviction. In December, 1912, the Fourth Annual Convention of the Intercollegiate Socialist Society was held in New York. It was reported that there were fifty-nine “chapters” of the society in as many colleges and universities, including all the leading institutions of the country, and eleven graduate chapters. There were between 900 and 1000 members of the undergraduate chapters, and 700 graduate members. The list of “enthusiastic disciples of Karl Marx” among college faculties includes the names of many professors of national repute. Socialism is at work, too, in the schools, and it has schools of its own, and in this city its “Sunday-schools.” The doctrines are put before children and youth not as doctrines of destruction and confiscation, and of revolution by violence and bloodshed, but as principles of ethics, of social justice, and the common good, all leading up to the beautiful dream of the brotherhood of man. College students are asked to consider the working of some privately managed undertaking, and then by plausible illustrations it is pointed out to them that the State could perform the service much better, and thus the ground principle of Socialism gets a lodgment in minds insufficiently informed to detect the falsity of the teaching. In the children’s schools is used “The Socialist Primer,” in which by text and pictures hatred of the rich and well-to-do is implanted, and the workingman is presented as the helpless victim of greed and cruel oppression. The facts of Socialism, the truth about Socialism, are open to ascertainment by every college and university trustee, by every president, by every giver of funds whose benefactions are employed in part to support the teaching of this devil’s creed that is to supplant our old-time reverence for the altar, the hearth-fire, the family, the graves of kindred, and the flag. There is no vital difference between Socialists. The revolutionaries of the Haywood and Debs type and the evolutionary Socialists of the college faculties have virtually a common faith, and tend inevitably to the acceptance of one method for its attainment.

Is this teaching of revolution and confiscation to go on? A sound course of instruction devoted to the exposure of the fallacies, the falsehoods, and the destructive purposes of Socialism in every college where it has gained a foothold, would make the student immune to its poisonous delusions. Truth is the natural shield against error, yet only here and there has its protection been extended over the endangered youth of our colleges. The teaching of false history and false science would not be tolerated anywhere. Is it less important that young men should be safeguarded against false teaching in matters that go to the very groundwork of their morality and their citizenship? The trustees, presidents, and faculties of the country’s seats of learning have a duty to perform that they cannot longer neglect without inviting the sternest censure of public opinion.

THE MONEY BEHIND THE GUN

In “The Flower of Old Japan,” a poem “for children between six and sixty,” Mr. Alfred Noyes represents his child seekers for the mirror of wisdom as encountering, among other personified phenomena of the adult intelligence, a curiously-inclined people known as the Ghastroi, of whom he says:

“Their dens are always ankle-deep
With twisted knives, and in their sleep
They often cut themselves; they say
That if you wish to live in peace
The surest way is not to cease
Collecting knives; and never a day
Can pass, unless they buy a few;
And as their enemies buy them too,
They all avert the impending fray,
And starve their children and their wives
To buy the necessary knives.”

The children are quite at a loss to know what to make of such a strange way of life.

Many children of a larger growth have wondered at the phenomenon of the actual world of which Mr. Noyes’s fancy is an allegory. But in the cultivation of the fear of war it has been left for the present year to reveal an aspect of sordidness the like of which has never before been known.

The world was startled, and all Germans were overwhelmed with mortification and shame, when in April the facts were made known concerning the way in which a market for military supplies had been created at Berlin. One great manufacturer of guns had been guilty of giving bribes within the very walls of the War Office. Another large company dealing in arms and ammunition had sent money to France in order to hire writers of anti-German articles, so that warlike feeling might appear to be stirred up, and the German Government be induced to place large orders for rifles and cartridges. All this went far beyond the ordinary manipulation of a “war scare.” With that we are familiar. It has frequently been seen in the United States. More than twenty years ago, when there was foolish talk about a war with Chile, a New Jersey steel-maker was heard to say, after the flurry was over, “Well, anyhow, it was a good enough war to secure me an order for $600,000 worth of ship’s plates.”

Such tactics by armor-makers and powder-manufacturers have often been exposed, but they fall short of the fiendishness of these German plottings. It is bad enough to work up an artificial excitement in your own land, to form leagues for a bigger army and navy, to point to various alleged foreign “perils,” to ply committees of Congress with fantastic military arguments, and to do it all, and finance it all, solely in order to get some fat government contracts. But to do what the German firm did is to pass beyond the mischievous and dishonorable into the diabolical. Deliberately and by means of money sent abroad to seek to rouse a hostile spirit and provoke a war for the purpose of making the weapon business good--this is to be willing to coin money out of the misery of two nations. It is to take the position that the blood of the killed and wounded and the tears of widows and orphans may be ignored if only they are “good for trade.” We have heard much of the mad competition in armament being a reduction of militarism to the absurd. These German revelations are a veritable _reductio ad horribilem_--all the more shocking because the German Emperor is to-day one of the greatest forces for peace.

Yet, when all is said, is not this thing, which the moral sense of civilized men pronounces shocking, only a development, one may say a logical development, of practices which have long been known and tolerated? There would seem to be only a difference in degree of turpitude between bribing one’s way to an order for cannon and paying out money, directly or indirectly, to secure general legislation which means money in a private citizen’s purse. This latter process has been not merely winked at in this country; it has been thought the regular and reputable thing to do. It has almost been honored. At least those who have profited by it have been honored. For years it was the vicious custom of corporations to group under “legal expenses” sums paid out to influence the legislature or Congress. Of one man prominent in his party, long in public life, and influential there, it was said that his motto, in politics as in business, was, “If you want anything, go and buy it.”

Such things were once far too common. They are frowned upon now, and we may believe that they are passing. It is necessary only to refer to what was done year after year in the matter of the protective tariff. The relation between campaign contributions and desired rates in the tariff bill was so close that it was hardly an exaggeration to say that the manufacturer put his coin in the party-treasury slot and drew out the customs duty he wanted. It seems certain that this habit of the “good old times” is disappearing before the spirit of the better new time. Yet evil is persistent. It is protean and recurrent. With all the gains that have been made, it is still true that the pecuniary view of legislation is too often met with. We laugh at “going in for the old flag and an appropriation,” but there are ways of corruption subtler than the blatant patriotic. In connection with too many bills and projects of law the questions are yet asked, “What is there in it for me?” “Who is putting up the money for this?”

Cases of outright legislative bribery are rare. In the few that do come to light or are suspected, proof of guilt is exceedingly difficult--how difficult, recent events at Albany have shown. But it is not the coarse methods of the purchaser or huckster in legislation that we need to guard against so much as the more insidious forms of swaying public legislation to private advantage. Too often, in connection with projects of law, a distinct “interest” appears. And frequently it is a moneyed interest. Movements that are artfully given the appearance of being spontaneous or voluntary are discovered to be secretly financed for secret purposes. The press is sometimes approached as well as legislatures and Congress. Sinister ends are craftily disguised. The very elect are occasionally deceived.

What is the remedy? It must be mainly moral. Against these anti-social practices the full power of social condemnation must be massed. The senses of men need to be sharpened until they can deny the truth of the cynical saying, “Gold does not smell.” Some gold does. And as against a private “interest” in legislation, there must be asserted, as the one standard, a broad State or National interest. Lacking that, no bill should be exempt from the severest scrutiny to expose a possibly selfish backing. That general principle established, and the further truth being insisted upon that no man shall be permitted before a legislative or congressional committee to be a judge in his own cause, the motive and the mischief of money-prompted legislation would be greatly diminished.

ONE WAY TO MAKE THINGS BETTER

THE FUNCTION OF HIGH STANDARDS IN LITERATURE AND THE ARTS

At first thought, it seems like mockery to recommend to a world of social unrest and of shifting ideals, a world that for the most part is struggling for three meals a day, the efficacy of music, letters, and art to ameliorate its condition. “Emerson in words of one syllable for infant minds” will not reach below a certain intellectual stratum. Beethoven for the people seems a contradiction of terms. There are times when, despite the crowds at the museums, Michelangelo and the Greek marbles seem to have as little influence upon the stream of humanity as rocks upon the current of a river that flows past them. The cry for the elevation of the race, which is the dominant note--the Vox Humana--of our time, the hope that we may all move up together, is a logical development of the Christian idea and the most creditable aspect of the new century. The whole world is reaching for sun and air. The ambition of the wage-earner is a counterpart of nature, as Lowell reads it into his “June”:

“Every clod feels a stir of might,
An instinct within it that reaches and towers,
And, groping blindly above it for light,
Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers.”

With the impetuosity and the lack of discipline of our day, this aspiration often overreaches itself. The highly stimulated desire for advancement is thwarted by unwillingness to take the plodding and the stony road. The treasures of the humble are forgotten. The quick fire burns up the substance and leaves but ashes. Meanwhile, it is something if, with Landor, we have

“warmed both hands against the fire of life.”

But, with all this impatience to “get culture,” and this rush to take beauty and intellectual resources to those who have them not, as food to the famine-stricken, we are in danger of forgetting the chief value of the best in literature and the arts: that _it awakens the imagination and gives poise to life_. Now, imagination and poise are two traits that differentiate man from the brute, and the superior man from the inferior. The best thinking is done by men of imagination; the best action is accomplished by men of poise; for, by poise is meant the faculty of holding one’s course courageously to the compass among contrary winds and waves. The value of high literary, artistic, and musical standards is not that they make poise and imagination universal, but that they affect the world secondarily, through the leaders in whom these qualities are developed. Who shall compute the worth to humanity of one great thinker, one great novelist, one great poet, one great painter, one great sculptor, one great composer? In debating societies, great material advances through invention and discovery are weighed in the balance with great achievements in arts and letters; but account is seldom taken of the intellectual forces that created the inventors and the discoverers.

It is because America is in need of great men that she stands most in need of these forces. The twentieth century appears to be a century of challenge to all the centuries that have gone before, with the accelerated momentum of them all. Now, more than ever, must we have men of imagination and men of poise, and every agency that gives promise of developing these traits deserves encouragement and support. The uplifting of the people to a high average of happiness is thus closely though indirectly related to the advance of literature and the arts.

COMMENTS ON “SCHEDULE K”

In the paper on the tariff as applied to woolen goods, by Mr. N. I. Stone in the May ~Century~, it was stated: “The great factor in the woolen industry to-day is the American Woolen Company, popularly known as the Woolen Trust, which was said to control sixty per cent. of the country’s output at the time of its formation in 1899.”

Mr. Winthrop L. Marvin, secretary of the “National Association of Wool Manufacturers,” in a letter to ~The Century~ says: “The American Woolen Company makes annual reports. Its capital stock in 1899 was $49,501,100 and in 1909 it was $60,000,000. The total capital of the woolen and worsted industry of this country, as stated by the Federal Census, was, in 1899, $257,000,000 and in 1909 it was $415,000,000. The output of the American Woolen Company in any given year has been at a maximum $51,000,000. The total output of the industry in 1899 was $239,000,000 and in 1909 it was $419,000,000. These figures controvert the assertion of ‘sixty per cent.’”

Mr. Marvin also states that while the Tariff Board mentioned duties on certain English cloths as being “from 132 to 260 per cent.,” it also made plain that those very high rates were not actually effective, since American competition operated to reduce the tariff cost to an average of 67 per cent., “embodying the higher cost of American materials and labor.”

--~The Editor.~

ON ALLOWING THE EDITOR TO SHOP EARLY FOR CHRISTMAS

_Counsel to a Literary Aspirant who Wishes to Enrich the Yuletide_

_Dear Chalmers_:

For years you have made no secret of the fact that you were studying Editors,--root and branch, genus and specimens. I know that you have diagnosed and pondered their little infamies, one by one. I know that you have pored over gossip of their habits and wiles--as chronicled by Sunday newspaper articles. I think I am not exaggerating when I surmise that you feel you know the tribe--analytically speaking--through and through.

And yet--and yet--you confessed to me not more than a month ago, with chagrin in your voice, that you have never dared attempt a Christmas story. Frankly, my friend, I was, and still am, surprised. You have been successful in more difficult things, yet you balk at a mere Christmas tale. I’ve thought about it so much that I am finally taking the liberty of sending you this letter, which you may, if you choose, regard as a monograph on “How to Write a Christmas Story.” As I have just sold my ninety-eighth tale of Christmas, I think you will allow that my counsel deserves some consideration.

First of all: be kind to the editor. Don’t put off sending him your story till the eleventh hour; but give him his chance to shop early. It is not his fault that his Christmas purchases have to be made before Labor Day. Therefore be considerate.

Spring is, of course, the best season to begin to think of tuning up for your December fiction. In any case, between the time the first dandelion shows its head and the end of July it is essential that you should tear yourself away from the play you are working on and oil your typewriter preparatory to the Christmas story. That accomplished, your task is all but finished. The only thing that remains before mailing off your tale of the Yuletide is to write it--a mere formality.

Of course you have to choose which Christmas story you will write. But that is a bagatelle. Fortunately the stereotyped varieties have become as easily classified as the different sorts of evergreen. A row of mental pigeonholes will contain the stock formulas. You have only to reach in and draw one out. Roughly speaking, the tales may be divided into those of the city and the country.

One favorite is the crusty millionaire story. You should make him a second Crœsus, dyspeptic, with a heart of flint. He bullyrags his servants unmercifully, and has no kind word for any one. He gets no happiness out of life, and will not permit anybody else to get any. Such carking selfishness is easily worth three thousand words. Then comes the great transformation scene, with incidental music of Christmas bells. A little child, a faithful old servant, the woman he did not marry:--one of these is the agent who sets him to giving away his money with both hands and--so we are led to believe--cures his indigestion.

If you have no fancy for this story, why not select the regeneration of the hardened man about town? He is irreproachably dressed, unspeakably bored, illimitably cynical, and inexpressibly selfish. The rise of the curtain finds him kicking some little dog that gets in his way. It is night. He wanders through the town in melancholy irritation. Then the story should run thus, to put it like an old-fashioned playbill of the melodrama: SCENE 1. Night in a great city.--Heartless Jack Mortimer.--The beggar repulsed.--The snow-storm.--The weeping newsboy.--“I haven’t any Christmas present for Mother!”--Jack Mortimer touched. SCENE 2. The slums.--The brutal policeman.--The comic washerwoman.--The garret.--“Hush, my child, there’s not so much as a single crust in the house.”--The arrival of Jack Mortimer.--The Christmas tree.--“God bless you, sir, you’re a real gentleman!” SCENE 3. On Fifth Avenue.--High Life among the 400.--The funny butler.--Florence in the conservatory.--The proposal.--“At last, Jack Mortimer, you have proved yourself _a man_!”--Great chime effect.--Curtain.

A variant on this is the story of the traveler who is stranded on Christmas eve in a strange city far from his family. Don’t forget to play up his extreme loneliness for a page or two. Then he either falls in with another homesick stranger, or helps out the party in distress who always appears at just the proper instant in this story. And at the end, his entire family, which has traveled all night, appears to surprise him.

So much for the city. After all, you were country-bred yourself, and if you prefer the country or the wilds for your story, they also are rich in stock devices. What better place than a Christmas story to tell of the old couple who have never had a child? We hear the ring at their door-bell, but as we turn the page no one is found at the door. But wait!--there in a basket is a cooing baby. A scrap of paper pinned to its dress begs, “Be good to baby!” And so on December 25, 19--, the old couple at last have their child.

It is also on December 25 that the selectmen of almost any town--_your_ selectmen--have decided that at last poor old Marthy Pettibone--whose only son disappeared years ago--must be taken to the poor-farm. The carriage waits at the gate. Dejected Mrs. Pettibone has just gone back to get her bird-cage. At that instant a tall stranger, bronzed and bearded, wearing a massive gold watch-chain, strides up the path and knocks at the door. Need I go on?

Perhaps most reliable is the Christmas tale of the _hinterland_. A gang of unkempt lumbermen or miners are snowed up by the worst blizzard of the decade. It looks as if they would have to fall back on bad whisky as Yuletide recreation. At this point the fearless young girl appears on the scene, arriving somehow. (If necessary, use a flying-machine.) The whisky is put out of sight and mind, and clean red shirts are donned. Follows the scene of the Christmas tree with an improvised Santa Claus and comic gifts, succeeded by a spelling-match and Virginia Reel. And what end so appropriate as the picture of the young girl lifted on to a table while the rough diamonds drink her health in ginger-pop which the cookee produces at the right moment. That ought to be enough of a Christmas story for any one; but if more seems needed, insert at the proper point the defense of the girl--from a half-breed who _would_ have whisky--by the young civil engineer of Harvard or Yale.

Or if you are not suited with any of these, why not take a shot at the yarn of Christmas at sea or below the equator? If, however, you sympathize with those who like an occasional pellet of religion sugar-coated as fiction, nothing is simpler than to give them the allegorical Christmas story. And I mustn’t conclude this survey of the property-room of holiday fiction without reference to the house-party story. The man must be very tall, very athletic, very handsome, and “virile.” The girl must have blue eyes and gold hair, be petite, and pert as a boarding-school miss. Remember to have them talk to each other as if they--and you--were being paid by the paragraph. The gatling-gun warfare of love-making must be carried on while they arrange the Christmas tree for little Tommy. And the hero’s final successful assault--with force used if necessary--must be made in the vicinity of the mistletoe.

Such, then, is the range before you,--of allegory, the city, the country, and that no-man’s land where picture men, seven feet tall, philander with debutantes.

The choice is yours; or, if you have no preference, it is easy enough to draw lots to decide. The whole business is almost too simple. At latest, midsummer should turn the trick. And you will be doing good all round.

The editor will be spared the pangs of reading Christmas fiction while making up his Easter number.

As for you, you will have no one but yourself to blame if you do not utilize holly, mistletoe, and chimes to finance your pleasant summer vacation.

Hopefully yours,

_Leonard Hatch_.

BROTHER MINGO MILLENYUM’S ORDINATION

(AS RELATED BY HIMSELF)

BY RUTH McENERY STUART

When I was a little pickanin’,
Down on Sweet Gum plantation,
I used to heah de preacher preach,
An’ screech an’ screech an’ screech,
Expoundin’ out salvation.

He’d open up dat Bible-book
Befo’ de congregation,
An’, sir, he’d read dem Scriptures out,
An’ shout an’ shout an’ shout an’ shout,
Widout no education.

He nuver knowed ’is A, B, C’s,
Much less pronunciation;
But when he’d focus on a page,
An’ rage an’ rage an’ rage an’ rage,
Gord sont interpretation.

He’d show de devil’s forkèd tail
Out clair, in his noration;
He’d h’ist dat pitchfork up on high,
An’ cry an’ cry an’ cry an’ cry,
An’ p’int insinuation,

An’ I’d brace up an’ clench de pew
An’ try to hol’ my station,
Whilst he’d light up de fumes o’ hell,
An’ yell an’ yell an’ yell an’ yell,
’Tel we could smell damnation!

One day I swooned off in a tranch,
F’om brimstone suffocation;
An’ red-hot sins wid forkèd tails
Riz up wid wails an’ wails an’ wails
An’ stopped my circulation!

I felt jes’ lak a cushion o’ pins
Big as de whole creation;
My tongue was swole too thick to speak,
But de pins dey’d stick, an’ de sins dey’d shriek!
’Tel I los’ all sinsation.

* * * * *

I come th’ough on de tranch-room flo’,
Wid de mou’ners on probation;
An’ when I heerd ’em screech an’ screech
’Bout “a babe an’ sucklin’ called to preach!”--
_Dat was my ordination._

BUSINESS IN THE ORIENT

BY HARRY A. FRANCK

He is the selfsame fellow still, the Cairene merchant, as in the days of Harun-al-Rashid. His shop may be the lower story of a great modern building, his wares the products of monster factories; yet he squats in cross-legged contentment as of yore, amenable only to the loquacious system of bargaining dear to the heart of the Oriental. The Western tourist, foolishly regarding time as of value, will lose all equanimity long before he has completed the smallest transaction. If his knowledge of the East and his patience suffice, and he begins negotiations early enough in the day not to be driven forth as the merchant sets up his shutters at nightfall, he may obtain the article he seeks at a just and equitable price. If he gains possession of it in less than the accustomed time, he will certainly have paid more than its market value, be his business acumen what it may.

Vagamundo, the Western traveler experienced in the ways of the East, catches sight, during a stroll through the bazaars, of an Arabic blade that takes his fancy. It hangs high at the top of the open booth, on the raised floor of which, close-circled by his tumbled chaos of wares, serenely squats the proprietor, with folded legs. Vagamundo, as from the merest curiosity, pauses to run his eye over the countless articles, suggests with a half-stifled yawn that the simitar looks like what might be a convincing weapon in the hands of an enemy, ventures to hope that the merchant is enjoying the fine weather, and strolls leisurely on. The shopkeeper continues to puff drowsily at his water-bottle, in his eyes the far-off look of the day-dreamer, until the Westerner is all but out of earshot. Then he appears suddenly to awake, and drones out a languid invitation to return. Vagamundo pays no heed to the summons for some moments, gazes abstractedly upon the wares displayed in another booth, then wanders slowly back toward the object that has attracted his attention. The merchant hopes that the traveler is enjoying the best of health, invites him to squat in the bit of space not already occupied by himself or his wares, offers a cigarette, and falls to discussing the latest doings of the mixed courts or the state of the cotton crop in the delta. By the time the second cigarette is lighted, he turns the conversation deftly to the simitar, and remarks that, though it is hung among his wares rather for ornament than for sale, it is possible he may some day tire of beholding it and part with it for--perhaps eleven hundred or a thousand piasters. Vagamundo, puffing reminiscently for a time, recalls having heard a friend express a desire to obtain such a weapon for, say, seventy-five piasters or so, and wonders, after all, why that friend should care for so useless an article. The shopkeeper regrets that the two prices named do not more nearly coincide, trusts that the inundations will not be so late this year as last, as, indeed, the Nilometer has prophesied they will not, and reaches again for the tube of his narghile. Vagamundo expresses his delight that the khedive has recovered from his recent attack, thanks the merchant for his disinterested hospitality, and saunters away.

The shortest instant before he is finally lost from view in the surging stream of donkeys, pedestrians, camels, runners, and bazaar-loungers he is called back to learn that the merchant is of the opinion that the new land tax will work more effectively than the old, that the simitar is probably worth only seven hundred and eighty piasters, and that some of the eucalyptus-trees in the Esbekieh Gardens are to be removed. With all due respect to Cromer Pasha Vagamundo doubts the practicability of his latest scheme of taxation, and hopes that his friend may somewhere run across such a simitar at one hundred piasters.

Thus the transaction continues: a third, a fourth, even a fifth time Vagamundo returns. By the sixth visit he has dropped the fiction of a friend, and openly offers two hundred and twenty-five piasters for the blade, and the shopkeeper arouses himself sufficiently from his lethargy to take the weapon down for inspection, and expresses a willingness to part with it for two hundred and seventy-five.

Over newly rolled cigarettes the negotiation proceeds, now touching upon the prevalence of ophthalmia, now debating the success of the recent installation of sugar factories, anon skirting the matter of simitars, their manufacture and price. Speaking of simitars, the merchant suspects that for the one in hand he would be satisfied perhaps at two hundred and fifty piasters. Vagamundo lays that sum--which both recognized from the beginning as the just price--on the mat between them, grasps his newly acquired property, and, amid protestations of lifelong friendship from the merchant, takes his departure.

Manchester business men and Chicago captains of industry, scorning such childish methods, have dived into the maelstrom of the bazaars of Cairo with the avowed intention of “doing business” after the manner of to-day and the West; but all in vain. The Cairene shopkeeper will hurry in his transactions for no mortal man. Whether his wares are purchased or not is, at least to every outward appearance, a matter to which he is at all times utterly indifferent. Let the pulsating Westerner, with his strange notions of the relative value of time and ease, press his mercenary suit too forcibly, and he discovers to his surprise, and perhaps even to his dismay, that the merchant of the East displays his wares and squats by day among them merely as a recreation and amusement, and that the notion of selling anything from the trifles about him is farthest from his thoughts.

A BALLADE OF PROTEST

BY CAROLYN WELLS

My Pegasus strains at his curb,
Although I have him tightly geared.
Though I protest, with speech acerb;
I cannot hold him, I’m afeard.
Oh, never has he so careered!
He’s like a bee-stung Hippodrome;
But, though his laws I’ve e’er revered,
I will _not_ write a Cubist Pome!

To keep my seat doth me perturb;
He plunges on, with head upreared,--
As he had eaten witches’ herb,--
Raging his maddened way, unsteered.
He wants my fair word-pictures smeared
With thought laid on in polychrome!
Nay, we shall leave one fence uncleared;
I will _not_ write a Cubist Pome!

He’d have me shape a lissome verb
Like a three-sided noun, ensphered!
He babbles of effects superb,
Produced by themes with truth veneered.
No! Till the Joy of Life is biered,
Till Reason wobbles in her dome,
Till all Fame’s other eels are speared,
I will _not_ write a Cubist Pome!

L’ENVOI

Pegasus, go and dree thy weird;
Down Duchamp’s staircase sadly roam;
I cannot have _my_ laurels queered,--
I will _not_ write a Cubist Pome!

FOREIGN LABOR

Looking over our spring samples.]

NINETY DEGREES IN THE SHADE

“Aren’t we having fun, Father?”]

THE BUTTERFLY

BY RUTH McENERY STUART

Sis’ Butterfly aimed to work all right,
But ’er wings des was heavy, an’ ’er head too light;
So she riz in de air, caze she see she was made
Jes’ to fly in de sun in de beauty parade.
An’ she ain’t by ’erself in dat, in dat--
An’ she ain’t by ’erself in dat.
]

THE SAME OLD LURE

BY BERTON BRALEY

When west winds blow,
I want to go
Where mountain-peaks are wrapped in snow,
And breathe the air
That thrills you there
With strength to do and nerve to dare!

When west winds call,
I hate it all--
This life of petty things and small!
And I have cried
Again to ride
Where sun is clear and plains are wide.

When west winds sigh
At night, I lie
And dream of careless days gone by.
(To hear me blow,
You’d never know
I’d not been west of Cleveland, O.)

LIMERICKS

TEXT AND PICTURES BY OLIVER HERFORD

THE GNAT AND THE GNU

“How absurd,” said the gnat to the gnu,
“To spell your queer name as you do!”
“For the matter of that,”
Said the gnu to the gnat,
“That’s just how I feel about you.”

THE SOLE-HUNGERING CAMEL

A camel, with practical views
On the nutritive value of shoes,
To the mosque would repair
While the folks were at prayer,
Little dreaming their soles they would lose.

THE DE VINNE PRESS, NEW YORK